


100,000 Airplanes

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, West Wing Title Project
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-23
Updated: 2008-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-03 03:23:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>According to Japanese folklore, a person who folds a thousand cranes will have their wish granted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	100,000 Airplanes

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to luzdeestrellas for the super-speedy beta. Written for [**the West Wing title project**](http://musesfool.livejournal.com/1487052.html).

Dean hates hospitals, hates the bright white linoleum floors and the harsh fluorescent lighting that makes everyone look a little green. He hates the sickly-sweet smell of illness and death that all the antiseptic in the world can't erase, and the sound of beeping machinery and frantic whispered conversations in the corridors. Most of all, he hates the look on people's faces--strained, tired, hopeful, desperate. He especially hates seeing all of it on the faces of kids, recognizes it all too clearly from his own face in the mirror for as long as he can remember: the shellshock, the hope, the fear.

"You need a hand with that?" Sam's voice breaks into his reverie, and he looks up to see Sam crouching down at one of the kid-sized tables in the room.

The bald kid at the table looks up, too, his face puffy and pale in the unforgiving light, and says, "I can do it."

Dean remembers Sam at that age; he'd had that same stubborn insistence on doing everything himself, though he couldn't even manage to tie his shoes until he was nearly eight, laces coming undone and dragging through puddles of slush and worse, until Dean tied them in double-knots that dried hard and impossible to undo. Sam had glared at Dean through too-long bangs whenever he'd tried to help.

Not much has changed.

This kid looks about seven, or he would, if he weren't bald and old before his time, the treatment for whatever he's got just as damaging as the disease.

Sam ignores the kid's sullenness, settles down on his knees to watch, wearing that dewy-eyed puppy-dog look he has that makes people spill their guts to him, even though this isn't even the kid they're here to interview.

"You need to make the creases sharp," he says, reaching out a hand to help and looking hurt when the kid snatches the piece of paper he's folding away. Sam glances up at Dean, who tries to ignore him, even when he says, "My brother makes the best paper airplanes."

"I'm not making an airplane," the brat answers, snotty and superior.

"It's a crane," Dean says, and shrugs one shoulder when Sam shoots him a surprised look. "Still have to make the creases sharp, though."

*

Dean's first grade teacher is named Miss Inoue. She has soft black hair and smells really nice, and each afternoon after lunch she tells them a story. Some of the stories Dean knows, remembers his mom reading to him in the warmth of his bed, her belly big and round with Sammy inside. Daddy doesn't read to them very much now, but Dean's a good reader, has been since he was four, and he reads to Sammy sometimes, in a quiet voice while Daddy uses the library.

One day, Miss Inoue tells them a story about a little girl who tried to fold a thousand paper cranes, because if she did, her wish would come true.

Dean doesn't know how to make a bird out of paper, but he does know how to make a plane--Daddy showed him a long time ago, before--before. It's almost the same thing.

Dean goes to work that night. He uses the pages of his coloring books, the paper soft and rough under his fingers, like cotton. He sits at the table and concentrates really hard so that the lines are straight and the creases are sharp. He remembers that's important, though he doesn't remember why.

Sammy occasionally tears one, or puts one in his mouth until it gets all soggy and rips apart, and Dean has to start over. His eyes burn, but he's not going to cry. He has a job to do, and he's going to do it. For Sammy. For Dad.

"Whatcha doing, big guy?" Daddy asks.

"Homework," Dean lies. Daddy says sometimes you have to lie, when you're doing work nobody else will understand. But it's okay, because they help people, and the planes are going to help his family, so he tries not to feel bad.

"Okay," Daddy says, "but it's time to pack it in and get some sleep."

"Okay." Dean lets Daddy tuck him in next to Sammy in the bed. Sammy smells like cheese and grass and baby wipes; he needs a bath. Dean will have to remind Daddy in the morning.

The next night, Dean runs out of his own paper, and even though Daddy said Dean should never touch his leather book, Dean pulls out the pages with no writing on them, and starts folding. He has thirty planes now, which is almost a hundred, which is a lot. Not as many as he needs to get his wish, but a lot.

The paper from Dad's book has sharp edges, and Dean cuts himself once or twice, sucking on his fingers and tasting blood like pennies. Not that he puts pennies in his mouth anymore, but Sammy still does sometimes--Sammy will put anything in his mouth unless Dean stops him.

Dad comes back from the grocery store and gives Dean and Sammy dinner, then sits down with his book. Dean holds his breath, keeps his head down, eyes on his sandwich, hoping Daddy won't notice all his empty pages are gone.

He does, of course. Because he's smarter than anyone else Dean knows, even Miss Inoue and Pastor Jim.

"Dean." It's his sharp voice, his _sir_ voice, the one that means stand up straight and don't lie, or there will be extra chores.

"Yes, sir?"

"I thought I told you never to touch my book."

"I needed the paper." He hesitates. "For school?" He doesn't mean for it to come out like a question, but it does.

"Don't lie to me, Dean."

"Yes, sir."

"Why did you take the paper, Dean?" Dad's eyes are very dark, and his face is very serious.

Dean is a little scared, but he raises his chin and says, "Miss Inoue said that if we could fold a thousand cranes, our wishes would come true." The words come pouring out, tumbling over each other, and Dean can barely catch his breath. "I don't know how to make cranes, but you showed me how to make planes, and it rhymes, and planes fly like birds, so I thought--I thought it would work." He swallows hard, blinks away the tears that are burning his eyes, and braces himself for his punishment.

Daddy doesn't say anything, but his face crumples like construction paper when Sammy puts it in his mouth, and he pulls Dean close for a tight hug. Sammy doesn't like to be left out, and he climbs up on Daddy's lap and bangs on Dean's arm with his spoon.

"Hugs?" he says, smiling wide and wrapping his arms around Dean's neck. "Hugs Dean?"

"Yeah, Sammy," Daddy says, and his voice is all weird and scratchy, the way it gets sometimes at night when they have nightmares. "Hug Dean."

*

They're back in the car, and Dean is loosening the tie around his neck with one hand as he turns the key in the ignition with the other, when Sam says, "According to Japanese folklore, a person who folds a thousand cranes will have their wish granted."

Dean forces himself not to glance over, concentrates on watching for traffic in the rearview mirror before he pulls out of the parking space. "Yeah."

"That kid--Do you really think--"

"It's just a story, Sam. It doesn't work." His voice is tighter than he'd like it to be, memory crowding hard now, though he'd forgotten it for years.

"We see so many things that aren't just stories, Dean. Why can't this be one of them?" There's hope in Sam's voice that Dean hates to snuff out, but knows he has to--has to keep Sam from grasping at useless straws. The last thing he needs right now is to lose Sam to a futile frenzy of origami, as if it will keep the hellhounds from taking him away. The fact that Sam is even thinking about it shows how desperate he's become, and as much as Dean hates that, too, he can't encourage false hope.

"Because it isn't. Because wishes don't come true, Sam. Not really." He remembers hanging from the ceiling in the warehouse, strung up like a piece of meat, still feeling the phantom touch of his mother's hand on his face, hallucinating the scent of her shampoo in his nose and the sound of her voice in his ear. "Not without some kind of price being paid."

"The cranes could be a symbolic sacrifice. Lots of rituals work that way."

Dean has to force his jaw to unclench. "Not this one."

"What's got your panties in a bunch, Dean? I'm just saying--"

"And I'm just saying you're wrong, so leave it alone." He can hear the echo of Dad's drill sergeant voice in his tone. Sam's never responded well to that, but he's got to give it a shot. "Those cranes aren't going to save that kid's life or make his cancer go away. They're just gonna give him a shitload of paper cuts and a metric fuckton of disappointment when it doesn't work."

Sam sucks in a breath, then lets it out slow, and Dean curses silently, because that generally means Sam's figured something out--usually something Dean doesn't want him to know.

"That's why you were so good at making paper airplanes."

Dean shrugs. "Planes, cranes--I was a kid. I was confused." He braces himself for the question, but for once, Sam chooses not to push. Dean figures it's pretty obvious what he'd wished for.

Sam reaches out and palms the back of Dean's neck, his hand lingering warm and strong on Dean's skin.

Dean swallows hard and says, "I'm glad to see you admit my superiority in the construction of paper airplanes, Sammy. You never did learn to do it worth a damn."

"I never had to," Sam answers. "My big brother was always around to do it for me." He gives Dean's neck another comforting squeeze. "Maybe you could show me again sometime."

Dean laughs. "Yeah," he says. "Maybe I could."

end

~*~


End file.
